


Scars on the mind

by solrosan



Series: Queensman [8]
Category: Kingsman (Movies)
Genre: Eggsy Unwin as Merlin, F/M, Guilt, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Prince Eggsy Unwin, Self-Doubt, Skype
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-28
Updated: 2019-07-28
Packaged: 2020-07-24 01:07:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20017759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/solrosan/pseuds/solrosan
Summary: When Eggsy gets the news that Dean has killed a woman, he's not sure how to handle it and it brings on a lot of questions about how he deals with things himself.





	Scars on the mind

**Author's Note:**

> This fic contains discussions of domestic abuse.

When Eggsy got out of the bathroom this morning, he had a missed phone call from the court’s press office. Against his better judgement – and the routines he and Tilde (along with Frida, the head of the press office) had decided on – he ignored it and pretended he hadn’t seen it. If it was important, they would call again. The new recruits were in the middle of firearm's training and Eggsy really didn’t feel like being Prince Gary today, because it was quite enough to be Merlin. The longer this went on, the harder it was to change between the different personas.

They did call back. Five times. 

And by lunch, he also had three missed calls from Tilde, but he didn’t have time to call her back right there and then, because Maria’s dog bit David’s dog and… children! The fact that the oldest was only four years younger than him was irrelevant. They were all spoiled children!

He turned the sound back on his phone, though, and when the chorus to _Killer Queen_ made Steven miss the mark by about two feet about 20 minutes later, Eggsy knew he couldn’t put this off any longer.

Pulling out his phone, he rolled his eyes at the recruit. “You have to handle distractions better than that if you want this job, Steven.” 

Without any other comment or explanation, he turned around and walked away to answer.

“Hi, babe,” he said quietly as he answered the phone. “I’m sorry I haven’t picked up. What’s going on?”

“Is this a bad time?”

“Sort of, yeah,” he said, throwing a glance over his shoulder at the twenty-somethings with loaded sniper rifles joking around a few yards from him. “But tell me anyway, what’s happened?”

Tilde hesitated — which did nothing for his nerves.

“Dean’s been arrested for murder,” she said.

Eggsy almost dropped the phone. “What?”

“It happened two days ago. Some British tabloid got wind of it and contacted the press office early this morning asking for a comment. Frida and her team have confirmed that he’s actually under arrest on murder charges, but that’s about all we know.”

“Who— who did he…?”

“His girlfriend.”

“ _Fuck_ ,” Eggsy breathed out. His heart had dropped to his stomach and his brain more than happily supplied visuals of Dean pushing a faceless woman down a flight of stairs, of him beating her senseless and strangling her...

“Eggsy?”

“I’m still here. I’m… Fuck! I should have killed the bastard when I had the chance. Fuck.”

“Eggsy…”

Eggsy rubbed his face with his hand. He cursed again, his world growing dark from the outside in and he had to shut his eyes. Dean had killed someone. He had no trouble believing it. He could far too easily imagine it. And it could have been his mum.

Or Daisy.

Damn… Daisy. 

If the reporters had contacted the court, it was probably just a matter of time before they would seek out his mum and Daisy. He needed to get to them before they did.

“Have you called my mum?” he asked. 

“I thought this better come from you.”

“Yeah… yeah. You’re right. And I should… I should… um…”

“Babe.”

Eggsy took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Fuck…”

“Talk to your mum.”

“Yeah. I… Yeah.” He finally opened his eyes again, feeling dizzy. “Um, does Frida need anything from me right now?”

“No, just think about if you want to make an official statement.”

“I… Should I?”

“Not if you don’t want to. So far it’s ‘The court doesn’t comment on ongoing investigations.’”

“He did it. I know he did.” Eggsy laughed mirthlessly. “I’ll testify to that if I have to. How’s that for a statement?”

“Let’s stick to not commenting for a bit longer.”

“Yeah. I know,” Eggsy mumbled, “I should call mum, and… and get Daisy out of school.”

“Call me when you’ve talked to her?”

“Yeah… Yeah, I will.”

“Take care, okay? And don’t do anything rash.”

“Mhm.”

“Promise?”

“I promise. I love you.”

“I love you too.”

Eggsy hung up. He looked at his phone. The world still felt small and dark, and it grew darker and darker by the second. He could have stopped this. If he had snapped Dean’s neck like he had Charlie’s. He could have — he would have — saved that woman.

He closed his eyes again and put away his mobile. Then he straightened his back and marched down to the shooting range with determined strides. 

“Listen up,” he said sharply as he got closer. The recruits clumsily fell in line. “We’re done for the day. Pack up and go back to your quarters, cuddle your dogs, and try really hard not to kill anyone. That’s what I’m going to do, at least.”

With that he walked away. He trusted the recruits to handle the rifles with care and put them away without hurting themselves, but he still sent Lancelot to check on them. Just in case. When Kingsman’s newest agent wanted to know why he was sent to babysit, Eggsy’s only explanation was that he needed to go and light a scented candle and recite a non-violent mantra.

Not that either of those things would have helped, even if he had actually planned to do it.

  


* * *

  


After having called his mum from the car, she and Eggsy had decided that he should pick Daisy up from school since he was closest and that they all would spend the night at Eggsy’s place. 

Pulling Daisy out of class wasn’t as easy as he had thought, though. Eggsy, whose mood hadn’t improved since he left the mansions, had to focus very hard on his breathing to keep his voice even and not grab the teacher by the collar in front of the entire class. In theory, he understood why pupils weren’t allowed to leave school without permission from their legal guardian, but he wasn’t in in the right headspace to hear those arguments right now.

Especially not coming from someone calling him _Mr_ Bernadotte. 

In the end, he opened the door and asked the teacher to step outside. The teacher followed without argument, but with a deep sigh in protest. 

“Now listen,” said Eggsy sternly, pulling up everything Merlin had taught him about body language, as soon as the door closed, “I know you don’t give two shits about who I am, you’ve made that very clear — and frankly, any other day I’d respect you for not kissing my title’s arse — but I’m not here as the Prince of Sweden, I’m here as Daisy’s brother and I need to get my sister home. Now that’s what I’m going to do even if I have to kidnap her and cause a minor scandal, because her dad has been arrested for murder and I don’t want her to learn about that from the press or in front of her mates.”

The teacher’s eyes grew wide. Eggsy took a deep breath. 

“So, can I please get my sister out of here before some idiot journalist figures it’d be a good idea to ambush a kid on the playground? Hate me all you want, but it’s not Daisy’s fault her dad’s a dick and her brother decided to marry a princess.”

“Yes, of course,” the teacher stuttered.

“Thank you.” Eggsy nodded once and loosened up on his body language, because there was no use keeping a hard line after having got his will through. “If anyone asks, call it a family emergency or something, yeah? For Daisy’s sake?”

“Sure. Yes.”

“Thank you,” said Eggsy again. He opened the door and popped his head in. “Dais, get your things, we’re leaving now.”

It didn’t take long before they walked out of school. No one paid them any attention, Eggsy carried Daisy’s purple backpack over his shoulder and held her hand in a tight grip. He felt terrible for dragging her away like this and even worse for having almost made a scene in the classroom. As he’d said to the teacher, none of this was Daisy’s fault and she shouldn’t have to suffer for it.

  


* * *

  


Daisy said nothing during the car ride, but she glanced at Eggsy when she thought he didn’t notice. Eggsy pretended not to. This had been the easy part. When he’d asked their mum how they would tell Daisy, if he should wait until she got home, she’d told him to do whatever he thought was best. 

He had no idea what he thought that was, but he could buy ice cream. So he did. Loads of it. When they got home, he placed Daisy on a stool at the kitchen island and gave her a spoon. She stared at him as he opened all the cartons and pushed them in front of her. All except the strawberry. That one he took for himself. 

“Eat,” he coaxed her, sitting down on the stool next to her with the strawberry ice cream in his hand. “I know it’s before dinner, but let’s not tell mum, okay? Or Tilde.”

Daisy smiled. Clearly just to please him and it made him feel like shit. He stalled for time by taking a spoonful of ice cream. Daisy, on the other hand, hacked away at the vanilla with her spoon without any real interest. 

Before Eggsy had found the courage to tell her, Daisy had gathered enough to ask. “What’s happened to mum?”

“No, Dais, no that’s— Shit. No, mum’s fine. I’m sorry. Mum’s fine, she’s… She’ll be here soon, okay? She needed to find someone to cover her shift at the bookstore.” 

Daisy nodded, her smile a tiny bit more convincing now. Eggsy reached out and stroked her hair. He felt like kicking himself hard between the legs for dragging this out and he knew he couldn’t wait for mum. It was the best course of action, perhaps not for him but definitely for Daisy.

“Mum’s fine,” he said one more time. He put down the ice cream. “The police arrested Dean yesterday.” 

Daisy shrugged. “They do that _a lot_.”

“This time it’s different. He hurt a woman.”

“Like he hurt mum?”

“I’m not sure exactly what he did, but he hurt her real bad and he’s probably going to prison for a long time.”

There was a spark of something in Daisy’s eyes when he said the last part. Triumph, defiance, relief, something. Whatever it was, Eggsy could relate to it.

“I don’t have to see him anymore?”

“No.”

Daisy’s face lit up and she finally took some ice cream. Eggsy wasn’t a hundred percent sure how that sort of thing worked, but he couldn’t possibly imagine that anyone would grant a convicted murderer visitation rights. And if anyone did, Eggsy would make sure Daisy wouldn’t have to be near the man ever again. One way or the other.

The fact that he hadn’t seen to that already made him feel sick.

“Is the woman going to be okay?” Daisy asked as she attacked the ice cream for the second time.

Eggsy hesitated, then he shook his head. “No, Dais… She, she died.”

Daisy froze. Her hand gripping the spoon, her eyes wide, her mouth slightly open. Eggsy wondered how much she understood, how much of it she grasped. A woman was dead, her dad had killed someone. She couldn’t remember Dean hitting their mum, but she clearly knew about it and God knows what she might have seen when she had been forced to visit him. 

“Did you ever meet any of his girlfriends?” he asked tentatively. 

Daisy nodded. Eggsy had a really hard time remaining still and for the first time in a long time he wished for his mum. 

For his own sanity and mental health he had pushed Dean as far away from his consciousness as humanly possible. He had no idea how many girlfriends he had had during the years, he didn’t know who this last one was… It hadn’t crossed his mind that there was a possibility Daisy knew this woman.

“Daisy,” he said, tugging gently at her sleeve to make her look at him, because this at least he knew he could tell her. “Listen to me… If a boy ever hits you, you have to tell me, okay? That shit ain’t love.”

Daisy nodded. 

Eggsy replayed what he had said, and added, “Same goes for girls. You tell me, yeah? No matter what they say you’ve done, because it’s really, really not supposed to be like that. You don’t hit the person you love.”

“Mm.” 

He watched her as she scraped at the ice cream with the spoon without any of her previous enthusiasm. She had been his salvation before Kingsman. She had been the reason he’d wanted to do better, be better. She still was. He had always wanted to protect her. From everything. 

But he had really dropped the ball here.

He refrained from stroking her hair again. Instead he took another spoon of strawberry ice cream, fighting hard to not let the black hole swallow him whole.

  


* * *

  


The recruits gave Eggsy strange looks when he came into their dorm the next morning, but none of them was stupid enough to ask and he gave no explanation. He sent them back out to the shooting range and tried to resume yesterday’s practice where they had left it. 

His mum and Daisy were still at his place, but he knew that wasn’t a long-time solution. The problem was that he didn’t know what would be one. Under no circumstances would he let them become media prey — not only when it came to this, but in general — but besides locking them up he didn’t know how to make sure it didn’t happen. At least he, his mum, and Tilde had decided to give them media training. He hated that it was necessary.

He hated just about everything about this.

As he was about to let the recruits take a break, Harry came walking down to them. The recruits pretended not to look, but they were so indiscrete that Eggsy felt like dismissing all of them. No field agent should ever be that obvious!

“Merlin,” said Harry. “My office, please.”

Eggsy nodded and told the recruits to finish for lunch and followed Harry to his office. He had a prickling feeling that this had to do with him going AWL yesterday. 

“I got an unethical request from your wife yesterday,” said Harry when the door closed behind them before Eggsy had a chance to explain. He picked up a folder from his desk and handed it to Eggsy. “She asked so politely that I couldn’t very well refuse.”

Eggsy frowned, but opened the file. This wouldn’t be the first time Harry and Tilde had ganged up on him. Inside the folder was the arrest warrant for Dean Baker. Eggsy gave Harry a short glance before he sat down on the chair in front of the desk.

“Do I want to read the rest?” he asked.

“I have Ms Brown’s autopsy report here,” said Harry, patting another folder on his desk as if he understood what Eggsy was really asking. “The one you’re holding contains transcripts of his interrogation. He denies everything for about ten minutes before confessing.”

Eggsy closed the folder, looking straight at Harry. “Was he drunk and lost his temper? Hit her and she fell against something?”

“The first part is correct. He was drunk, but he beat her to death. He claims he doesn’t remember what happened. A neighbour called the police.”

Eggsy’s stomach turned. “What did you say her name was?”

“Brown. Erica Brown, 47 years old.”

“Give me the autopsy report,” Eggsy said, holding out his hand.

Harry handed it over without a word. Eggsy took a deep breath before opening it. He had seen a lot of deaths through this job. Most of them he had cause himself. There was so much blood on his hands even though he could justify almost all of it. He had killed more than Dean ever would, more than most people ever would. Yet the photos of Erica Brown’s swollen and bruised face made anger burn bright and hot in his chest. He took another deep breath to make sure his hand didn’t tremble as he turned the page. 

It was not the same, what he did and what Dean had done. It was not the same, what he trained the recruits to do and what men subjected the women they claimed they loved to. 

It wasn’t the same.

He closed both the folders when he had read all of it and gave them back to Harry without a word. Harry put them aside, watching him carefully.

“Are you all right?” he asked after a while.

“Yeah,” muttered Eggsy. “Thank you for… I don’t know, aiding my wife in breaking the law?”

“Always happy to oblige.” 

Eggsy gave him a weak smile to mask his discomfort with the entire situation. He had been better at this before, putting on a mask in front of the people he loved. He supposed it was a good ability to lose. 

“You all right?” Harry asked again.

Eggsy shook his head this time. “I could have saved her.”

“How? By making yourself a murderer?”

“Rather him than her.”

“Rather him than _you_.”

“Don’t even. We’re both killers.”

“But we’re not murderers.”

“Same shit, different spelling.”

Harry shook his head. 

They held each other’s gaze until Eggsy gave up with a small, frustrated sound and rubbed his face.

“What if it had been mum?” he asked, looking up at Harry again. “I came home and she was all bruised and... I don’t— What if it’d been mum?”

“You saved your mum.”

“But not her.” Eggsy nodded at the autopsy report on the desk. “I could have saved her. I knew what Dean was. Always have.”

“Her blood is on his hands, not yours.”

“Well…” said Eggsy with a deep sigh as he got out of the chair. “You’ll have to remind me of that.”

“I will.”

Eggsy smiled weakly. “Thanks. And thanks for the read. It was— Thanks.”

“Any time. What are you going to do about Daisy and Michelle.”

“Fuck if I knew…”

“Keep me updated, and let me know if there’s anything I can do for any of you.”

Eggsy nodded. He left with the excuse that he had to look at the imbeciles down at the shooting range, but instead he slipped off to the kennel to cuddle some of the unpicked puppies.

He was fairly sure Harry knew that.

  


* * *

  


“I read the draft you sent.”

“What do you think?” asked Eggsy. “I mean, Frida’ll have to write it proper and all that, but as a start...”

Tilde smiled. “I think it’s an amazing idea.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

They were Skyping. Eggsy from his home office with his iPad and Tilde on her phone from a suite in Berlin. It was almost two weeks since Dean had been arrested. Eggsy had agonised over what to do every waking hour of every day. Or at least that’s how it felt. Both Tilde and Harry had been unsuccessful in their attempts to ease his guilt about not dealing with Dean before it escalated to murder. Logically, he knew they were right, but it wasn’t the logic part of him that was the loudest right now.

“It should only go out if he’s convicted,” said Eggsy. “Otherwise we stick to not commenting, and just…”

“...curse the patriarchal society we live in?”

“Something like that, yeah. But they’ll put him away. Don’t think there will be a court case, not with his confession and all.”

“So I can put Frida at ease that you won’t volunteer to testify against him?”

Eggsy let out a small laugh. “Yeah. I’ll behave.”

”Good. How are you all holding up?” 

”Well… I’m sure you’re getting hourly updates about me from Harry.”

Tilde didn’t even have the decency to look guilty. Eggsy wondered how he could be so lucky to have both her and Harry in his life.

”Daisy has trouble sleeping and mum’s gone to eight AA meetings in two weeks, so…”

”But she’s going to the meetings. That’s good.”

”Yeah… I just... It’s....”

”This isn’t your fault. None of it is.”

”I know, but I… I...”

”I know.” Tilde was quiet for a moment. “Talk to me.”

Eggsy hesitated, struggling to keep looking at her. He tried to get his feelings into words for the longest time, but then he turned the tablet upside down on the desk. Tilde said his name, pleadingly, but then nothing more. 

He leaned against the desk and hid his face in his hands. He forced himself to play the tape of everything Harry and Tilde had told him these last weeks. It wasn’t his fault. Dean’s sins were not his. He couldn’t have stopped this. Killing in the line of duty wasn’t the same as domestic violence… 

“You still there?” he asked without looking up from his hands once he’d reached the end of the tape.

“Yes.”

“‘m sorry…”

“It’s okay. Should we stop the video and just talk?”

“No, I’m... “ He sighed, turning up the tabled again. He smiled when he saw her, resting his face in his hand. “Hi.”

“Hi there.”

“I feel like shit.”

“I can tell.”

She looked so concerned. Worried. It made him feel worse. And incredibly guilty. He understood that Erica Brown’s death wasn’t his fault, he really did, but...

“What if I hit you?” 

He asked before he could stop himself, before he lost the courage to put words to his fear. Tilde sat up a little straighter. 

“Why would… What— No,“ she said. “Eggsy, you would never do that.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes, I do.”

Eggsy shook his head. “No, you don’t. What if I get mad and hit you? We haven’t had a fight. Not really.”

“You wouldn’t— ”

“I kill people when I get mad!”

Eggsy waited with his heart in his throat. He fought hard to not turn the tablet down again and regretted declining the offer to continue this over the phone. He had raised his voice. He… He had...

“I’m not scared of you,” Tilde said. 

“But I _am_. Because what if I’m just like him, like Dean?”

“Babe...”

“I didn’t have to kill Valentine. Or Charlie. I could have… not killed them. I’m that good. But I did. Because Valentine shot Harry and Charlie— Charlie—” Eggsy opened his clenched fists, spreading his fingers. “I killed him because I wanted to. So bad.”

“And because he was going to kill you.”

“Would have killed him anyway.” He shook his head. “When you told me about Dean, and when I read the autopsy report, I… I wanted to smash his head in like the Mountain with Oberyn Martell.”

Tilde made a small face at the mention of the most horrific death scene in Game of Thrones. Eggsy couldn’t blame her, but it still made him uneasy. 

“What if I’m like him?” he asked again, half-rhetorical, half-pleading. “I don’t know what to— Or what I’d—” 

“You’re not. I promise, you’re not.”

“But what if I _do_ get angry and hit you?”

Tilde frowned. “Have you talked to Harry about this?”

”No, I— No.”

“Perhaps you should?”

“You know he trashed an entire pub the first time I met him?” Eggsy asked in a weak attempt to lighten the mood a little. “Not sure he’s the right person for this.”

“Or maybe that’s exactly why he is.”

Eggsy tried to smile, but failed spectacularly.

“I trust you with my life,” said Tilde, “but I, I get if you don’t, and if part of that is because of your training, who’s better to help you find tools to work through it than Harry?”

“Yeah, maybe,” he mumbled. Her reassurance felt good to hear, but he couldn’t help feeling a little guilty. As if he’d tricked her or something.

Perhaps he should talk to Harry, now that he had managed to put words to it. It probably wouldn’t hurt. Not that he expected Harry to have the answers, but it was a start. Talking about it was a start.

His smile grew more convincingly. “I trust you too.”

  


* * *

  


> #### Statement by HRH Prince Gary regarding the conviction of Dean Baker
> 
> Ms Erica Brown had the misfortune to meet Dean Baker and my thoughts go out to her family and friends today and every day since I heard what had happened. I sincerely hope that the verdict will bring them some peace, even though it won’t bring Ms Brown back.
> 
> Domestic abuse is not only a personal tragedy; it’s a symptom of a larger problem. The Crown princess and I are therefore creating the Erica Brown Memorial Foundation which will to work for and promote proactive efforts against domestic abuse and to help people affected by it.
> 
> More information to come.


End file.
